Market eye candy

Look at the creative ways people decorate their booths at market. I kept noticing fabric shapes strung together ...

Circles

Garlands

Diamonds

Cut-out shapes

Hanging shapes at the Moda booth

The very cool Cotton & Steel fabric line display

Sights that made me laugh at market

Man in skirt/kilt (there is often one of these outfits)

Mom Cave signs

Nefertiti enjoying a neck warmer

Frida selling Clover items

Determined fabric designer who wore out her new knee at Ikea

New sights at market

So! Market was beautiful, as always. Here are things I saw that were familiar market fare and others I haven't noticed at market before:

Fresh displays that are a treat to look at ...

Babies! Isn't this serious guy cute?

 

 

 

LIVE models, grinning for hours on end.

LOTS of babies!!

An Instagram contest

Mark Lipinski liking Kansas City Star quilts.

The wierd sights of set-up day at market

We're in Pittsburgh, back at the David Lawrence Convention Center setting up for spring quilt market. You can peek from above at how it's going ... you see things you will NOT see anywhere else, like:

A rotary cutter about as tall as most people, where we'll all be snapping our photos this weekend.

Little manikins waiting to be dressed.

Convention center workers riding bikes to cover the distances in the hall.

Massive packing crates.

A natty dresser at Sample Spree who made his shirt himself - out of scraps!

Disneyland of Quilting

Main shop - stuffed with precuts

Driving through Missouri the other day, we had to pull off Highway 36 to see for ourselves what is happening in Hamilton.

That sleepy little town is being transformed. Just a few years ago, the Missouri Star Quilt Company started there. Today, it is expanding to overtake the entire main street. They give tours several times a day and during my tour, someone opined that they were seeing the Disneyland of Quilting. A couple from England was there to visit.

Our tour started at the (new) very large main retail shop (top photo). We passed 2 new restaurants on our way to the quilting retreat building, where there are 37 sleeping spots upstairs and sewing room galore downstairs.

Two buildings just purchased ...

We walked on by 2 newly purchased buildings (not sure what will go there). Across the street, we toured separate shops: one just for solids (!), one just for batiks, one for seasonals, and one for sewing novelties. The upstairs of those buildings is being developed for small retreat group use.

Solids shop

On to the quilting lodge (the old library), crammed with 7 longarm machines. Computerized programs will stitch the design of your choice for 2 cents a square inch. They will bind your quilts too - $45 machine stitched, $55 hand stitched, no matter the quilt size. Full racks of tops and finished quilts were nearby.

Inside the quilting lodge - tops ready to be quilted are in the background.

The original shop is now the company's shipping center, full to brimming. A new warehouse is nearly complete just off highway 36. When it's ready, the current 13 shipping stations will expand to 35 stations. They currently run 12 hours a day there and mentioned a record or 2235 orders received in one day. There is a customer service department there and a photographer who photographs product (mostly precuts) all day long ...

The overflowing shipping department

The story about the company (link above) mentioned 25 employees - last week that number was 115 and growing regularly ... I ran into several people I knew from Kansas City (about an hour away), there to see the newest quilting phenomenon in our area. It is definitely worth a stop.

Not So Fast Bub

Bertha's name is left, notice Not So Fast Bub below and right ...

Here are a few detail shots of the quilt I showed a few days ago. Whoever made this quilt liked to embroider - there is embroidery in each corner. There are several names so it is not clear who made the quilt. Names include Bertha Weeks (several times), June Weeks, fNaomi, and Daniel LeRoy Harker ...

Kathy Sullivan found information about a few of the names on this quilt. In the 1930 census, a widowed Bertha Weeks, age 50, was head of a household of three daughters: Naomi, age 27, Elizabeth, age 24, and June, age 15. They lived in Bethel, Ohio, (Clermont county). By 1940, June was living in another household, Naomi was there too ...

Corners were popular spots for embroidery - this corner got pretty wild ...

Bertha Weeks / Freda / Doris - notice the reversed S's

The Army / Air Corps fabric in the middle was popular during World War II.

Thank you Kathy Sullivan

Kathy Sullivan is a quilt collector extraordinaire. We met to stitch together last week and she passed this quilt on to me, knowing I would love love it. And of course, I do.

There are many good things to report about it. First, it is signed (with several names) and dated (March, 1944). Second, it is finished! I find so many impulsive tops that were never finished. It is backed with coarse muslin Central Star feedsacks from Fort Wayne, Indiana with no batting. The red binding is stitched on with a running stitch. It measures 90" x 74".

Kathy found the quilt at a flea market in northern Kentucky. I'm showing it now because Mom and Mother are embroidered on it. There are more incredible details - I'll show those next.

Happy Mother's Day. Thank you, Kathy Sullivan!

Results so far ...

Mindless piecing! I brought scraps and am piecing them together for sashing for a future project. Strips are 3" wide and wider, of varying lengths. I'll trim them up as I add them into the project.

THEN

I took the shards from trimming and stitched them onto a small scraps of wool. I've been wanting some new fabric pins that would not be too heavy on a t-shirt ... these pins are about 2" square.

Food for the Sewing Soul

AHHHHHH ... I am at a sewing retreat this week. A room full of tables, filled with friends sewing by hand and machine.

I planned to finish a little editing work each day. HAHAHAHA It is NOT happening, I am sewing my brains out. And in the best style of those of us who improvise, I brought along a beeg bag of scraps and I felt certain I would be entertained. And I am. I started by stitching together strips of scraps, mostly square, that will be sashing in a project I plan to work on this summer (t-shirt quilts for my girls).

Now I'm making coasters from scraps.

Next pins. Stay tuned.